The HTC 8X Windows 8 smartphone is one of the best looking and pleasing phones to hold in the hand. The soft touch finish and pyramid design with tapering sides is comfy and grippy, and the phone looks like none other on the market. We particularly like HTC's vibrant color options, though low keys types can always opt for black. Unlike the excellent Nokia Lumia 920 that's locked into an ATT exclusive, you can get the 8X on ATT, T-Mobile and Verizon. The price and color selection varies from carrier to carrier.

In our video we look at the Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile versions of the HTC 8X. Honestly, they're all identical other than cellular radio bands, carrier bundled apps (which are removable) and color options. AT&T takes the divide a little farther, offering not just the standard 16 gig 8X for $199 in California Blue (the color of our review units) with contract, but also the Limelight (zingy yellow) 8 gig for $99. Verizon offers the phone for $199 with contract in your choice of red, blue or back with 16 gigs of storage and it's the only US 8X with Qi wireless charging. T-Mobile's 8X lacks LTE since they don't have an LTE network and it comes in blue for $149 with contract.

The HTC 8X has a high pixel density 4.3" Super LCD II display with Gorilla Glass running at 1280 x 720 (just slightly lower resolution than the 4.5" Lumia 920). It's a good looking display with excellent text clarity and good color saturation, though it doesn't wow up like the Lumia 920's richly colorful display and like most phones except the Lumia smartphones and iPhone, it becomes hard to see outdoors in sunlight.

Like most Windows 8 smartphones, it runs on a capable 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU with Adreno 225 graphics. That's the same CPU and graphics you'll find in most high end US Android smartphones. It benchmarks similarly to the Lumia 920 and Android phones like the HTC One X and Galaxy S III, though it does much better at the Sunspider Javascript test where it sits at the top of the heap with the Lumia 920 and iPhone 5. Windows Phone has always felt extremely responsive, even in the old single core Windows Phone 7 days, and the 8X is responsive to the max.

The HTC 8X and Nokia Lumia 920

The phone has dual band WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC and a GPS. HTC doesn't have their own navigation solution like Nokia, so if you want spoken turn-by-turn directions you'll have to pay for your carrier's bundled solution (TeleNav, AT&T Navigator or VZNavigator) or go with TeleNav's Scout. Bing Maps does provide good maps with extensive POI's and on-screen navigation directions.